Orleans: Trade & Intrigue

Orléans is a popular bag-building game from Reiner Stockhausen. Orléans: Trade & Intrigue is the second big expansion for it, published by Tasty Minstrel Games.

In this expansion, you’ll find four new modules inside, each driving Orléans in a different direction. The ‘Trade’ side of things come in the form of Orders. These are cards, with specific stated resources on them, along with a city. If you can move to that city and pay in said resources, you complete the Order for points. This has a major impact on how you decide to move around the French countryside. Which way will you travel to best hoover up cheese, wine and cloth?

There’s also two new Beneficial Deeds boards. It’s a double-sided board, each providing cool new rewards and bonuses. You send Followers here to go on permanent ‘placement’. (Thinking of Orléans as having worker placement traits to it; you place the Followers here, to gain the stated reward.)

The Beneficial Deeds board is a form of thinning your bag. But every time you place a Follower here, you gain a bonus. One side of this board is the ‘Intrigue’ board, where your bonus is instead to hinder your opponents. You could attack their trade posts, kidnap them, or be a big, bad tax collector! This is a far more interactive side of the board, for players who don’t mind making the game a lot more mean…

There’s new place tiles, where you can send your Followers to partake in new actions. Last of all, there’s some new Event tiles. (34 of them, to be precise.) This differs from the base game. Now you cannot guarantee that a certain quota of Event types will occur during the game. These Events keep you on your toes!

Whether looking for more plates to spin, or adding a combative streak, Trade & Intrigue adds a lot more depth to Orléans.

Player Count: 2-5 Players
Time: 90 minutes
Age: 12+